Operation Damocles

by Oscar L. Fellows

  “What else have you got, Dr. Johnson?” asked Stickle.

  “Well, you asked about elapsed time for target acquisition and firing. From geostationary orbit, it takes light two hundred and forty milliseconds to go from a satellite to earth and back, round-trip. The destructive energy beam traverses across the surface of the target in microseconds, far too fast to acquire target analysis data and reflect it back to the satellite’s fire control system, so that it can decide what the composition of the immediate object in its path is, and adjust the frequency of the beam accordingly. During the two-hundred-and-forty-millisecond delay, the beam will have traversed more than one and a quarter million meters.

  “I’ve concluded that there are two possibilities. The possibility I believe the least is one in which the weapon sweeps the target with a mapping signal that analyzes the target footprint prior to firing the main laser. It analyzes all the components that make up the target—rocks, trees, highways, dirt—and their size, composition, etc. It maps them into its fire-control system’s memory as Cartesian coordinates, then adjusts the resonance of the energy beam as it traverses each mapped grid reference during the firing sequence. It all takes place in a few hundred milliseconds of course, but the mapping sequence does require a finite amount of time, depending on the area of the target. Figure a quarter-second for the mapping signals round-trip transit, an eighth of a second one-way for the main energy beam, fifty-three milliseconds per square mile mapped—it works out to about twelve square miles analyzed, mapped and obliterated per second.”

  “My God!” said Mercer.

  “Jesus,” said Stickle.

  “I’m still interested in your resonance theory, Dr. Johnson,” said Wallace. “Could you elaborate on that a bit?”

  “Well, as you are no doubt aware, one of the significant properties of a resonant signal is that it permits maximum energy transfer between the signal—in this case an energy beam—and the object or objects that it is resonant with. This is the property engineers think about most often, with regard to resonance. It’s called coupling efficiency, and is normally of primary importance to radio and television engineers. How far a receiver will pick up a signal, its sensitivity in other words, depends on its coupling efficiency. We couldn’t have radio or TV communications without resonant circuitry.

  “Another way to look at resonance though, is that it allows a relatively small signal energy to pump up a very large energy storage reservoir, until it self-destructs. Like pumping up a balloon with a tire pump until it explodes. To something the size of an atom, or even a molecule, a few watts is a lot of power, and an energy pulse of only a fraction of a watt becomes a lot of power when the pulses come at a rate of three times ten to the fifteenth power—three quadrillion pulses per second. To deliver forty terawatts to the surface of the Earth at that frequency, with an energy conversion efficiency of say, twenty percent, a sine wave coefficient of RMS power of 0.707, and an attenuation or loss factor of ninety-five percent of the beam energy in passing through the atmosphere, the power supply would still only have to generate a fraction of a watt. A few watts, at most. That’s why your IR detectors couldn’t find it, gentlemen; a coffeepot radiates more heat.

  “Some of you may recall reading of instances where buildings, or bridges, were set in harmonic motion by the wind, or by traffic passing over them. They began oscillating, each oscillation stronger than the one before, increasing in amplitude as the resonant signal continued pumping the system, until they whipped themselves to pieces. That’s why soldiers march in route step when crossing a bridge, to break up any repeating impulse. Even dogs, with their peculiar trotting gait, have been known to set a suspension bridge into violent motion. Those are classical, elementary examples. Neither the soldiers or the dog could knock down a bridge by kicking or stomping on it, but by simply walking across it in a synchronous step that matches the bridge’s periodic chord, they can. Simple harmonic coupling.”

  Johnson continued, “Closer to our time and technology, laser cavities are commonly pumped with an extraneous energy source, at the resonant frequency of the cavity. The valence electrons in the lasing medium, usually a gas or dye, are pumped up with energy until they simply can’t hold it any longer. When the electrons pass the threshold of their ability to absorb energy, they cascade to ground potential, giving up the trapped energy as a monochromatic burst of electromagnetic radiation, or simply put, an intense beam of colored light.

  “All this happens in a few microseconds, of course. Not a lot of energy involved, overall, but look what it can do—burn through metal, or carry a TV picture to Mars.

  “In the case of this weapon, though, that’s where the similarity ends. The electrons in the target material aren’t allowed to drop back to a neutral state. If the timing was uneven, and some electrons reached saturation before others, the result would be a mild electric current flow, as the free electrons traveled through the material and bumped other electrons off their parent atoms. Each atom that lost an electron would become a positively charged ion for a few microseconds, until another stray electron came along and filled the void created by the missing one. The thermal effect of the electric heating might warm a metal object, but that’s about all. The charge on the atoms would then be in balance again. The net effect would be a lot of random heat generated by sporadic electric currents, but nothing truly destructive.

  “The factors that make the difference are time and uniformity of energy distribution in the target material. Electrons travel through matter at a finite speed. In a copper wire, it’s about a hundred and forty thousand meters per second, much less than one percent of the speed of light. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s say that an energy beam moving at the speed of light ionized almost all the atoms in a chunk of material—gave them a positive charge—all at once. Like charges repel one another. Each resonant pump of the beam would force the atoms to a higher energy state. The energy beam would do this so fast that the electrons would not have time to flow between atoms; they would all be simultaneously repelled, and blown away completely. They would be forced away from the nucleus, out into the space normally occupied by the covalent electronic bonds—the shared electron orbits between associated atoms that hold matter together. It would make every atom in the matrix of the substance repel every other atom, and the substance would fly apart with tremendous energy.”

  “That brings up the problem of frequency,” said Wallace, intent on Johnson. “How does the beam couple with all the different elements involved at the same time, in order to generate repulsion uniformly throughout the target?”

  “There are a couple of possibilities there also,” said Johnson. “First of all, one could select a fundamental, or even a harmonic that closely matches the resonant period of most of the elements in the target material. Another way would be to pick a specific frequency that is resonant with a single element that is common to most of the compounds that make up the target materials. For example, an element that is common to steel, plant life, soil, et cetera—even to fuels and lubricants—is carbon. It’s the basis of all organic tissues, including animal life.”

  “But it flashes water into steam, Dr. Johnson,” said Mercer, “and that’s simply hydrogen and oxygen.”

  “If you’ll reflect, Dr. Mercer,” said Johnson. “I’m sure you’ll agree that as far as we know, it flashes groundwater into steam. Groundwater is comprised of hydrogen and oxygen, just as is pure water, but it also has dissolved impurities—minerals, decomposed plant and animal life, acid chains—a true potluck stew of hydrated compounds and elements, including carbon. The energy released by the fissioning of carbon compounds would provide the exothermic energy to do the rest, and carbon is only one possibility. Hydrogen and oxygen are also good candidates for a key element. The problem with that is that coupling efficiency would not be maximum for every element or compound, and that grates on my bias toward symmetry.”

  “You said there were two possibilities,” prompted Wallace.
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br />   “Yes. Well, the other is the most likely in my view, because it has symmetry. It permits efficient coupling with all the elements involved, and it also negates the need for a mapping signal to analyze the composition of the target. With the bandwidth available in an ultraviolet laser beam, there can be any number of modulator frequencies, all operating at once. Enough to cover all the elements in the periodic table, if need be. I favor this explanation because in complex compounds, such as any target is bound to consist of, the different ionization potentials of the integrated elements would cause low-energy substances to ionize before others, like in a distillation column, and the resulting currents flowing through the less volatile compounds would tend to damp the phase-sensitive reaction. The latent energy in the volatile elements would also sap the thermal energy of the beam. It would increase the energy demand on the beam, and make for a bigger power supply for the weapon.

  “No, these people were efficient. They wouldn’t get that far, and overlook something so obvious. It’s so much easier to introduce multiple gating frequencies. That way, all the elemental atoms attain peak energy at nearly the same instant. With nowhere to go, the charged electrons can only drop back to ground state by disassociation or radiant emission. Some soil silicates have latent fusion energies exceeding eighteen hundred joules per gram. The beam acts as a catalyst to release the energy. The compounds fission.

  “Once that happens, the electrons avalanche to ground potential, giving up all that stored energy as electromagnetic radiation, across the entire spectrum, from hard UV to radio waves. Almost everything in the target area dominoes into the reaction. Instantaneous temperatures and pressures inside solids would be incredible. Well, gentlemen, have I missed anything? Any flaws in my argument?”

  “Nothing that is immediately evident,” said Wallace. “You’ve been most thorough, Dr. Johnson.”

  “So what we have, assuming for the moment that your hypothesis is correct, is a laser disintegrator. Buck Rogers and Star Wars come to life,” said Stickle.

  “That’s about it, I’m afraid,” said Johnson.

  “So how do you recommend we attack it, Dr. Johnson?” asked Wallace.

  “I think that your only chance is at close range, from orbit,” answered Johnson. “Anything else is too risky. If you make a mistake and shoot yourself in the foot on this one, it’s really going to hurt. The whole human race might pay for it. Speaking as one human being to another, I don’t want to see the Earth destroyed.

  “Since I’m as much a pessimist as Dr. Wallace, I’m sure you’re going to go through with the attempt, no matter what I say, so for the sake of humanity, gentlemen, please don’t fuck it up.”

  XXIII

  “Mr. Jack Townsend, this is Professor Theodore Wallace,” said Dr. Ortiz, as he introduced the men. “Ted is the leading lasers and optics man in our neck of the woods. He hangs his hat over at Cal Tech. When he’s home, that is. I’ve been trying to reach you for three days, Ted.”

  “I had to attend a meeting back at Huntsville,” Wallace said. “I’d like to talk to you about it later. The graduate student taking my messages took ill while I was gone, and everyone else is off for the holidays. Was it urgent? Oh, excuse me, I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Townsend.”

  “Same here, Dr. Wallace,” replied Townsend.

  “No, it wasn’t that urgent. I could have called your dean at home, but I thought I’d give it another day before I got worried. Jack has some technical questions concerning the space weapon, Ted. He’s the friend of a mutual friend, a real good-old boy,” Ortiz said. A look passed between Wallace and Ortiz. “I’d like you to help him if you can.”

  Wallace regarded Townsend curiously, as if assessing him. “I’ll be happy to do what I can,” he said.

  Townsend hadn’t survived as an undercover agent all his life without developing a keen sensitivity to subtle behavior in others. He didn’t know what to make of the electric warning glance that had passed between the others, but he had noted it. He had been in Ortiz’s office when his secretary unexpectedly announced Ted Wallace. He suspected that the two men would have some interesting things to say about him after he was gone.

  “Ted has two labs on our campus, Jack. He teaches an irregular graduate course here one day a week. I’ve asked him to let you have some space, and a couple of graduate students. That should get you started. He’ll need three computers, and internet and web connections. Will you see to it, Ted?”

  “Of course,” said Wallace.

  “That’s very kind of you, Dr. Wallace,” said Townsend. “I’ll try to be as little bother to you as possible.”

  “No bother, Mr. Townsend. I’ll have everything set up by next Wednesday, barring the unforeseen.”

  “Thank you both,” said Townsend, getting up. “I really do appreciate your help. I guess I’d better be getting home. I’ll be back Wednesday afternoon, then.” So saying, he left.

  Though he didn’t hear the conversation, his instincts were proven right a few minutes after he had taken his leave. Wallace signaled to Ortiz, and they took a slow stroll across campus, talking as they walked, pausing in their conversation occasionally, to let a student within hearing distance pass.

  “Well, how close are they to working it out?” asked Ortiz.

  “They surprised the hell out of me, actually. Whoever started the asinine rumor that Southerners were dumb, never met Able Johnson. He’s a physicist at Georgia Tech. With the exception of a couple of minor points, he’s right on target. He almost sounded like Leland, in describing system resonance. Come to think about it, Leland’s from the South, too, isn’t he? Would they know each other?”

  “Leland’s from Utah, but they still might know each other. I’ll ask, next time I talk to him. He’s got to know about this, anyway. What are the minor points they missed? They might be important to us.”

  “Just control details really. Johnson thought that several laser transmitters might be located around the country, as a contingency measure, to prevent the military from interrupting the control signals by seeding the stratosphere with an ionizing isotope. Not a bad guess, really, since we did anticipate that possibility. If I were in his shoes, it’s a solution I might have thought of, too. The only other thing is the power supply. They don’t have a clue, as of yet.”

  “I’m not sure it matters anymore,” said Ortiz. “Their attack strategy is going to be based on the assumption that it has the capability to fire, and for as long as it has to. They can’t afford to assume anything else.”

  “What do you think they will do?”

  “Joe says the people at Peterson Air Force Base are trying to activate an old killer satellite called Diana. The Strategic Defense Command abandoned it in orbit some years back. He sent me the encrypted physical data via the mail drop in San Francisco. It’s a Kinetic launcher with spent uranium spears for projectiles. From the engineering data, it looks like the missiles and launchers are all independent systems. There is a good possibility some of them are intact, and can be fired. The big if is the satellite maneuvering and guidance systems. If those can be reactivated, they have a chance.”

  “Think we should offer to help?”

  “No. They’ve got to do it on their own. If we get too involved, we might slip up and generate some suspicion. We don’t want to have anything more to do with them than is absolutely necessary. We’ve got people inside their telemetry sites already, and that ought to be sufficient for now.”

  “What if it fails, or can’t be reactivated?”

  “Joe thinks their only back-up plan is to try to launch a nuclear warhead into a catch-up orbit. It would have a small target cross-section, and with a little luck, could be mistaken for space debris until it’s too late. It might also be disguised as an innocuous communications satellite, or a derelict booster shell. Paul and Leland both predicted it.”

  “What if they can’t make coincidence?” asked Wallace.

  “We’ll help them in a roundabout way.”

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p; “Are we so certain that this is going to work, Hector? Can we really predict what they are going to do, with such certainty? It seems to me that we should just lay down the law to them, and get on with it. Things are going pretty well now, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, they are, but the minds of the American people have to be won; don’t you see, my boy? They must understand, without a doubt, what kind of government they have. They must see them in action, all subterfuge stripped away.”

  “Don’t you think that they might just return things to what they were before?”

  “I don’t think so. I think they will use the events of the past year as an excuse to impose totalitarian rule. They have to subdue us now, so that nothing like this weapon can happen again. They must remove any possibility of future interference by subjugating the planet.”

  “I guess you’re right about everything,” said Wallace. “You’ve managed to call the shots pretty accurately, so far.”

  “Well, at the risk of seeming a little too cocky, one does acquire a bit of wisdom simply by growing old. You can only hear the lies so often, before you begin to understand how things really work. Only the young can really be whipped into an idealistic fervor by the same old bullshit that’s been used over and over again, since the days of Rome—probably since the dawn of man. Why do you think that the fighting military is made up of teenage kids? Who else could you talk into charging into machine-gun fire and mine fields?”

  “Your subtle point is, that us younger guys aren’t too bright. Is that about it?”

  “Well, I didn’t exactly say that. Of course, I wouldn’t argue with you, either.”